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March 18, 2007
STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY
Boston Globe
Christopher Shea
"You wouldn't want a city made up of buildings by Gehry, [Rem] Koolhaas, or [Daniel] Libeskind," Glazer says in an interview, invoking three of today's leading-light architects. "That would be a World's Fair. It wouldn't be a city."
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Brooklyn, meanwhile, will not too long from now see something very much like a small city of Gehry buildings: Gehry is the designer of the $4 billion, 20-plus acre Atlantic Yards project, brainchild of the developer Bruce Ratner, that will include a basketball arena for the NBA's Nets and residential towers, 17 structures in all -- including the tallest building in Brooklyn.Is this not like the old modernist city-shaping? Glazer says no: Atlantic Yards was "not a Gehry-designed project. It was more or less designed by the developer." Gehry adds his signature touches, but most of the program -- the number of housing units, the density -- grew out of a purely commercial calculus. (He also thinks the project is too big, but that's a different issue.)
"I'm talking about people who were thinking about how to create a better city," Glazer says. And from that important conversation, Glazer says, architects have been missing.
Posted by amy at March 18, 2007 9:32 AM